Transcript 投影片 1 - University of Hong Kong

M. Foucault: History, Knowledge/Power, and Modernity
1. Introduction
a. ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ by John Fowles:
story, characters and alternate endings (“True piety
is acting on what we know’) --- but ‘what we know’ is
only possible through the cultural representations
available to us at a particular point in time (thus
Victorian gentleman vs. (female) outcast, fossils’
classification tables vs. enigma;
evolutionary/predictable vs. the unpredictable/
spontaneous.
b. F’s is a discursive theory of history.
c. Discourses as bounded bodies of knowledge in
history are often discontinuous in their development,
but F’s concern is not on this history as such, but the
history of the present, i.e., what are the historical
conditions (that lead to) of the discursive systems in
modern society.
M. Foucault: History, Knowledge/Power, and Modernity
d. Discourse is knowledge, and in the emergence of
modern society, such knowledge is increasingly
dominated by the human sciences: thus, the
threshold of modern society is where man (and
not God, kings, tradition) rationally takes charge
of his affairs, and where his attention is drawn to
himself as an object of (scientific) study.
e. Knowledge, especially knowledge of man and his
society, is not neutral, innocent or innocuous;
knowledge is power, and power is knowledge; one
is implied or necessitated or imbricated by the
other.
f. It is this kind of knowledge/power that F focuses
on; it is through this that he rethinks the historical
path of modern society, the
exigencies/requirements of modern capitalism,
and the nature (and room for) of political
resistance
M. Foucault: History, Knowledge/Power, and Modernity
2. F’s main concerns and his methodology
a. Unlike the classical thinkers, F is not interested
in arriving at a grand schema/theory (Marx’s
logic of capitalism, Weber’s iron cage…) that
explained the ‘whence (where it comes from)
and whither (where it will lead to), and, of course,
the ‘why’ of modern society.
b. History is much more discontinuous, and each
form of society is a specific historical
configuration that has its concrete conditions of
existence. It is these conditions, and not the
primary motor of change (capitalism, or great
men, or evolution), that concern him. Indeed, F
is interested in specific fields of such historical
configurations, although these fields share the
similarity that they are all about the body (broad
sense), viz. life, death, health, sexuality,
punishment…
M. Foucault: History, Knowledge/Power, and Modernity
c. F is more interested in ‘how we live’ than ‘what we are’:
instead of focusing on our ‘inherent’ nature, attention is
on the props of life/existence (language, knowledge/selfknowledge, ideas, concepts): ontology of the present.
d. F’s methodology I: archaeology and genealogy
• There is no self-evident area of enquiry in
the history of ideas (systems of ideas and
their changes); thus no ‘constituent subject’
like madness or criminality; there are different
conceptions of sanity in different periods, and
one conception in the 17th century may not be
intelligible to one in the 19th century
(discontinuities are more frequent than
continuities);
• Within a historical framework, one finds
different trajectories, levels, techniques and
tactics, operations, practices that are related
to bodies of thought/ideas;
M. Foucault: History, Knowledge/Power, and Modernity
Methodology I, cont’d
• the findings of these ideas and practices may not be
regarded as proper or legitimate or scientific, because in
different periods, society may have a different hierarchy of
‘science’ or ‘truth’ (the proper, positive codes for us to speak,
write and understand things, including ourselves);
• in each society, thus, there could be knowledge that is
marginalized and fragmented; it is this subjugated knowledge
that F wanted to uncover; to F, the terrain of ‘history of ideas’
in human society is not governed by a main trend, the
inevitable victory of positive science (whether that trend
evolves from man’s intentions, or that trend serves some
important functions);
• the historical changes in the ways (codes, concepts,
categories) we represent and understand ourselves are like
shifting relations between the thought-strata (some privileged
and some subjugated); the method is to trace the ways they
intersect, come together, and form a relational pattern
(regardless of the original intentions and functions);
M. Foucault: History, Knowledge/Power, and Modernity
Methodology I, cont’d
• this is the meaning of genealogy: to trace links, to
give names, with each part of the genealogical tree
being a ‘pattern/structure into itself’;
• doing genealogies is the tactic; the overall method is
to map out these sites of fragmented, discontinuous
genealogies; mapping out means attending to these
sites as local discursive structures/patterns; excavating
them and reveal them in broad day light: this is the
meaning of archaeology of knowledge;
e. Methodology II: Documents vs. Monuments
• in attending to the different thought-patterns of
different periods, F made the distinction between
documents and monuments;
M. Foucault: History, Knowledge/Power, and Modernity
Methodology II, cont’d
• Documents: when using documents to study the
prevailing thought-patterns of a period, one is drawn
to the intentions of the author; one is interested also
in the origins of the product, and the consequences
(example: an official document in colonial Hong
Kong);
• Monuments: F suggested that one should treat it as
a monument, i.e. what it symbolizes, and, more
important, what underlying rules, perceptions, codes
enter in the way the monument is ‘written’ (thus
document in colonial Hong Kong is a product/site
where, e.g., Foreign Office thought-pattern, ‘colonial
rule in a Chinese society’, ‘Hong Kong in the teeth of
communist China’, ‘Chinese cultural traditions’, etc.
come together; the monument is one where all these
thought/ideas/knowledge/concepts/codes (i.e.
discursive practices) are inscribed;
M. Foucault: History, Knowledge/Power, and Modernity
Methodology II, cont’d
• F’s interests is in these fundamental codes that
define or delimit the limits and forms of what are
expressed
• the set of rules that define the limits for any
given period is the archive; an archive is a
collection of statements, and statements are the
elementary units of discourse (bodies of thought
as social practice);
• two important reminders before moving on to
substantive issues and F’s insights-------
M. Foucault: History, Knowledge/Power, and Modernity
 F is not interested in history per se (what
happened in the past, and even so, he has a
distinct philosophy of history); he is always
concerned about the predicament of the
present, i.e. what are the historical conditions
of the present (or crudely, if our 20th century
sexuality --- its knowledge and its practices --is unintelligible to 17th century people (as there
are different discourses/knowledge systems in
the two periods), and vice versa, are we now
happier?);
 F takes seriously the fact that we could only
understand reality in terms of the concepts,
etc., we find prevalent in that reality; but he
also reverses the relation: in each historical
period, bodies of knowledge produce a
particular kind of social subject; he then builds
his theory of power on this basis
M. Foucault: History, Knowledge/Power, and Modernity
3. Discourse, Knowledge and Power
a. Elements or levels of discourse:
•
Discourse is language; it uses signs to denote things, uses
concepts to create representations; but discourse is more
than just denoting thing;
•
Discourse as social practice: it is the means by which one
expresses oneself or accomplishes something; ‘speaking’
(with its rules and criteria) is creating; by ‘speaking’, new
social space/positions and new subjects can be created;
•
Discourse as bounded bodies of knowledge: the idea of
discipline (sociology as a discipline and disciplinary
practices such as school, prison, clinic, etc.); F’s use of
discourse is to trace the relations between
discourse/discipline as knowledge and discourse/discipline
as practices;
•
Discourse as part of ‘social technologies’: e.g., writer and
reader share something that makes writing and reading
possible; what is shared and used in uttering, exchanging,
etc. (example: Chinese mandarin and colonial mandarin)
M. Foucault: History, Knowledge/Power, and Modernity
b. F’s analysis of discourse in operation
• how do we order things (illustration: from the
imaginary, alien pattern of categorization to the
traditional Chinese notions of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ to the
modern man’s train schedule); the borders we set for
our thinking reveal episteme: thought system
characteristic of a period, of a society;
• Renaissance thought system: people think in terms
of similitudes (resembling, contiguous, analogous, and
‘sympathy’ (cosmic conception of man and nature…);
sympathy and antipathy (yin and yang in Chinese
culture?), or the cosmic meanings of the four elements;
• Knowing in that system is not about observing and
documenting and demonstrating, but more about
interpreting (divination as interpretation, as one could
find resemblances in most diverse objects); the
orientation in knowing is thus not objectifying all things,
but of finding signs
M. Foucault: History, Knowledge/Power, and Modernity
• Classical period (from the 17th century): a new
episteme replaced the old one; the orientation in
knowing is to establish separate identities for things
(not drawing them together, finding resemblances
among them); thus analysis, and representations
• this is an objectifying trend, and is
reflected/illustrated in three empirical domains: life,
labour and language;
• life as natural history: all living things are
categorized, catalogued and classified in tables;
labour is more about the exchange of goods;
language is about classification in terms of use;
• in all three domains, the discourse F found there
does not place Man at the centre
• it is only with the emergence of modern society
(and modern human sciences) in the 19th century
that Man occupies the limelight of attention
M. Foucault: History, Knowledge/Power, and Modernity
M. Foucault: History, Knowledge/Power, and Modernity